Outlander and Trainspotting in running to be named Scotland's top screen adaptation

Brian Ferguson

Outlander, Harry Potter, Trainspotting and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie will battle it out against Rob Roy, The 39 Steps and Whisky Galore in a public poll to decide Scotland’s greatest screen adaptation.

Film, TV and literary lovers are expected to vote in their thousands to decide the winner, which will be announced during Scotland’s annual week-long celebration of reading next month.
The Crow Road, Under The Skin, and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde are among the film and TV versions of classic novels by Iain Banks, Michel Faber and Robert Louis Stevenson respectively to make the longlist.
The 1971 TV adaptation of Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song, Walt Disney’s 1953 animated version of JM Barrie’s Peter Pan, and the BBC Scotland series The Vital Spark, which was based on Neil Munro’s Para Handy books, are also in contention.
Rebus, Hamish Macbeth, Case Histories and Wire in the Blood are among the modern-day TV series to stand a chance of winning.
Children’s favourites include Julia Donaldson’s The Gruffalo, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Katie Morag, by Mairi Hedderwick.
The huge global fanbase for Outlander, the American TV serie partly set in Scotland and adapted from Diana Gabaldon’s mult-million selling novels, will make it a strong contender to win the poll.
A line from Gabaldon’s first novel, which was released in 1991, was last year named the nation’s favourite literary quotation.
However Trainspotting is also likely to be a contender thanks to the 20th anniversary of Danny Boyle’s iconic movie adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s book and the forthcoming sequel, which was filmed in Scotland earlier this year.
Meanwhile organisers of the Book Week Scotland celebration announced that actor Alan Cumming, broadcaster Tony Robinson, chef Mark Greenaway and former Scots Makar Liz Lochhead will be taking part in special events across the country.
Authors in the line-up for the fifth annual nationwide event, which runs from 21-27 November, include Jodi Picoult, Will Self, Christopher Brookmyre, Jenni Fagan, Alexander McCall Smith and Ian Rankin.
More than half a million books will be given away during Book Week Scotland, including 150,00 copies of a short story collection of "secrets and confessions" of dark secrets submitted by members of the public.
Organisers are also encouraging people to take on a reading dare to coincide with Book Week Scotland by gifting a book or reading excerpts to a stranger.
Marc Lambert, chief executive of the Scottish Book Trust, which runs the intiative, said: “It’s a fantastically positive endorsement of Scotland’s thriving literary scene that Book Week Scotland is now entering its fifth year, bigger, better and bolder than ever before.
“Authors, booksellers, libraries, readers and partners too numerous to mention have really taken this national festival to heart and made it what it is – a joyful, democratic and inclusive celebration of reading’s unique capacity for empowerment, enrichment, education, solace, pleasure and growth.”
Scottish culture secretary Fiona Hyslop added: “The importance of reading for pleasure cannot be underestimated. It can be a force for good in so many ways, helping people realise their potential.”